Review: Forever Free ; joe haldeman

LoLth

"the long awaited sequel to forever war"

25 years in the writing seemingly. Well, he should have waited a bit longer until he could think up a decent ending.

What it's about:
If you've read the forever war you'll be familiar with the main characters and the social/political set up of things. If not, here's a quick synopsis:

Forever war:
Earth goes to war with a race called the Taurans - an alien hivemind type thing. Unfortunately the war is light years away and soldiers have to go into suspended animation to get to the front line. This results in them being extremely old by earth standards (main character is over 1000 years old by the end of th book, whole FTL-time dilation comes into it too). Unfortunately for the soldiers, when they finish a tour of duty and return to earth the whole place has changed and nearly all enlist again to get back to something familiar. By the end of the book, there is peace between the Taurans and MAN - what humanity has evolved into, a hive mind of neutered people that reproduce by cloning.

Forever free:
Picks up a few years after forever war. The veterans are resettled on a planet called MF (middle finger, a joke lost on MAN). It's not a nice place. The humans (veterans) are tolerated by MAN and Tauran as a gene pool in case the cloning ever hits a snag (they'll have a genetic baseline to fall back on refresh their own stock). Veterans get restless and plan to take a ship and go on a ten year trip that in real time will be ten thousand years. Of course, things don't quite work out that way.

What I thought:
Well written. I like Haldeman's style and construction. It's science but nothing too mind numbing. The characters are well represented without being overly described. Sometimes however, things can be a bit too simplified, like the relationship between the main character and his son and daughter for example. The first two thirds are enjoyable if a little slow - especially compared to it's pre-cursor. The last third is....well...emmmm... Kak. It has one of the worst sci-fi mechanics I have EVER come across! It's almost like he had to finish up for dinner or something. (spoiler at end of post)

Verdict:
If you can manage just to read the first two thirds and avoid the ending then by all means go ahead. You'll get some interesting ideas and images. If you can't resist the ending, don't blame me.
No Iain Banks this, but interesting nonetheless.

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***Spoiler***:
They return to their planet to find it devoid of MAN and Tauran life. Same with Earth and the Tauran homeworld. Turns out God is a scientist and the universe is an experiment and seeing as the characters tried to leave the universe he considers the experiment over and is tidying away his test subjects. Convince God to return everyone. God does so and then leaves. Oh, and there is a race of Alien shapeshifter historians that have been monitoring humanity and tauran since time began that they happen to meet and who explains all to them.absolute Kak. sorry. it is rotten.

Draco

By christ the ending is muck. Once they reach earth STOP READING. Not knowing what happens is better than knowing what actually does happen. I have never been so disappointed with an ending.